AfriGadget arrives to the larger screens of broadcast television

AfriGadget is a multi-authored blog created by tech expert Erik Hersmande, dedicated to simple, sustainable inventions in Africa. It is a testament to Africans bending the little they have to their will, using creativity to overcome life’s challenges.

AfriGadget in these days have decide to implement itself, with a passage from the small screens of laptops to the larger screens of broadcast television. The production company Made in Africa TV is taking AfriGadget to the East African airwaves to inspire millions of viewers to become active creators of new and ingenious products, themselves.

Made in Africa TV plans to produce AfriGadget as separate programs in each of the Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan television markets. A local presenter will host the program and introduce the correspondents and their stories.

Each episode of AfriGadget TV will consist of five thoughtful stories from around the region, highlighting remarkable and unexpected hardware innovations by East Africans. These stories are inspiring mini-documentaries, portraying young and old, men and women, as well as high and low-tech innovators and their products.

"Made in Africa TV is an East African social enterprise producing mass media with a social impact. We are in the process of setting up a network of video journalists from across Africa to produce the stories, which will be made available on the website as well. As an AfriGadget TV-correspondent you explore your local surroundings to find and capture the innovators and their AfriGadgets. If you are a videographer willing to become a correspondent for this program, or if you know of great AfriGadgets that should be considered for inclusion, please send an email to afrigadget@gmail.com"

More info

www.afrigadget.com

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Liberos, the community of readers of Sardinia

Liberos is a social network built by some writers, publishers, booksellers, libraries, cultural institutions, festivals and other publishing professionals in Sardinia.

Liberos won yesterday, January 29, the "Prize cheFare" The jury, after studying the proposals of the six finalists, decided to award the victory to the network that enhances the value chain of the book, and the protagonist of cultural projects.

The reasons are:

• recognizes the reading value economic, cultural and social, individual and collective;

• involves an original way all the actors in the chain of the book;

• develop a model capable of balancing instances commercial and cultural;

• Balance physical and virtual network in the process of building community;

• the promoters were able to act in a highly reactive and have used the announcement as an opportunity for learning and focus the project efforts.

The project is now firmly anchored in the reality of Sardinia, but the problem is that addresses national concerns in the first place and the less populated areas of the country and those who do not have a bookshop or a library. The Jury recommends that, during the maturation phase of the project, the winning group to address explicitly the issue of the growth of the idea beyond regional borders.

Liberos born as a working group in July 2012 and was officially presented at the Festival “Isole delle Storie" in Gavoi. The Association is formally established September 18, 2012 by seven founding members who each represent a segment of the chain of the book. The social network has now registered the satisfaction of the readers and operators, who approached with a curious attitude and full of expectations.

Turning point in the conference "Stile Liberos" organized in Fordongianus on 13-14 October, with the participation of publishers and writers of national importance.

Liberos make of the interaction its strong point. Users - in addition to the normal functions of the forum - have the opportunity to sign a card (card VIR - Very Important Reader) and to accumulate points that will enable them to have easier access to presentations, festivals and initiatives related to the book. These points will be accumulated through actions in line with the ethical manifesto of the project, such as the purchase of books in-store associates and constructive participation in the community. Readers will have the opportunity to receive automatic updates regarding publications and initiatives in which they are declared explicitly concerned; publishers and authors to propose thus its novelty, and booksellers to communicate presentation events and new arrivals in the catalog, as well as libraries.

So explain: "The crisis that we were doing to die one by one, has come to show us that we are not exploiting the potential: the common strength of our relationships and expertise."

More info

www.liberos.it

PremioCheFare

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Diario di Felix, a project about life

A year in Felix, a foster house in Rome, southeastern suburbs near Tor Bella Monaca, to tell the stories of Valerio, Ishmael, Joseph, Saleem and the other guests of the community. The photojournalist EmilianoMancuso has lived in Casa Felix with a group of teenage boys and their stories complex and difficult, creating "Il diario diFelix" (The diary of Felix), a multimedia project - consisting of documentary film, a blog and a photography project - in collaboration with Parsec and the association Zona.

With the intimate and spontaneous language of the diary has immortalized the life of eight of these guys, sent here by the Juvenile Court, foreigners arriving in Italy and accompanying unprotected, or Italian separated from their parents, often for violence. Guys who have suffered and who are facing life "almost without skin," Emiliano Mancuso tells us day by day their moments of joy, the most sad and trivial.

Il diario di Felix - Trailer from Zona on Vimeo.

He writes in one of the blog post in which he tells his experience, because he realizes that he needs words, because the images are not enough to tell these stories invisible.

"My way to stay in the foster home is to try to resume life in there, they are there for that and that is my interest in their story I relate to everyone, young or operators across the room. I am a witness and my job is to film the scene. But after almost a year my relationship with them, the guys and the operators, has changed. Over time almost every day and staying at Casa Felix the distance of the witness decreases more and more and I am involved in the dynamics of the house. Was not only unavoidable, but necessary. And that's what I want in the end, that prompted me to Felix: stay, return, give presence, so you have to get involved in changing the confidence of all, because I live there and the house too. "

The project is supported by the European Community through the program "Youth in Action". The final version of the documentary is expected in June 2013.

More info

Diario di Felix

www.emilianomancuso.it

photo credits: Emiliano Mancuso

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Krisis: An Archive for disorientation

Archive for disorientation

Krisis Magazine is a project which underlying’s aim is to suggest a reflection about different aspects of the permanent crisis and about the responsabilities which come from operating as designer, that is to say as the ones who shape things, both material and immaterial, within this contemporary scenario. 

The theme of the last issue is Orientation. From time immemorial, mankind has tried to constitute their own orientation within the world in which we dwell by using different tools for discerning information: linear language (in the shape of narrations and myths), by systems of classification (mainly of taxonomical type), by graphic representations (atlases, guides and maps), etc. During the last decades these models entered a crisis. The crisis of orientation was born from the complexity of correlations between numerous different emergencies, which most visible effect is a total tendency to fragmentation, to individualisation, to selection, to separation, to the monetarisation of the social and environmental context. In this scenario it becomes crucial to think over disorientation as an experience that may be a source of renewal for new practices of orientation. 

From this point grow up the new project Archive for disorientation, an online visual archive about disorientational paradigm. 

Krisis is a project by the collective Unità di Crisi, which consists of communication designers, professors and theorists.

More info:

http://www.krisismagazine.com/

http://disorientation-archive.tumblr.com/

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